Roleplaying and Storytelling

To save the World

This is a sort of comment to Quietude’s article, ‘The End of the World and You’, which by the way I enjoyed very much, especially the part about how players do not always act along the lines of the RP scenario you planned.

In fact that is the curse of RP scenarios, but also the charm of them – just about anything might happen. And some times what happens is a lot better than what you had originally planned…
To illustrate this, here is a story about a RP event that changed its intended course:

Our mud mainly caters for explorers and h’n’slashers, and most RP-enforced muds would probably sneer at our attempts at RP. But we do have a few good roleplayers, and occasionally we throw a RP scenario as a sort of Quest.
This one was set up as an Alien invasion, in the form of a microscopic creature that invaded the brain of the victim, taking over its body and mind completely. (Yeah, yeah, I know, not very original, but most stories have been told at least once before.)

The background story was, that some remote planets had been infested already, and that the ‘virus’ was spreading rapidly. There were certain characteristics that could spot a converted person, most apparent the fact that the Alien race consistently substituted the letters ‘b’ and ‘p’ when talking.

We got some players to apply as converted Aliens, posted some notes on the board and waited for the fun to start. The main idea was of course to stop the invasion at the source, but also for the players to expose and report any converted Aliens, by asking smart questions. And for the converted Aliens to try and convince others of the advantages of converting too, in order to survive and multiply.

A group of dedicated players dutifully set out to save the Galaxy, and scurried around looking for clues how to stop the invasion, directed by one of our Game Masters, who did a great job at switching into different mobs to lead them on. So in a couple of days the Group spotted and eliminated a number of infection sources, and finally managed to find the Alien Queen, who was of course producing eggs at an amazing speed.

Meanwhile the other part of the scenario had taken an unexpected twist. Some of our converted Aliens avoided logging on their main chars, in order to not being spotted too easily by their speech disorder, so no Aliens were reported. Instead these shrewd Converts used a second char, working as a ‘free agent’ for the Alien Race. One of them was so successful in this, that she managed to convince one of the members of the Save-the-World Group that the Aliens were actually a benign and peaceful race, who didn’t form the symbiosis unless invited, and who simply acted out of a wish to help humanity, by sharing their greater wisdom and knowledge with us.

So this player, at the Climax of the Quest, turned against her Group, trying first to stop the attack by arguing, and then, when this was in vain, to defend the Alien Queen. And naturally died on the spot, together with the Queen and the rest of the Aliens.

The Game Master was so impressed by her roleplay that the messages to the mud after ‘Mission Accomplished’ changed 180 degrees from the intended course. So, instead of telling the players that the Galaxy had been saved, they were told that a peaceful, wise, benign and superior race had been annihilated due to our prejudices and narrow-minded fear of the unknown. And that we missed the chance of our lifetime, a chance that never would return…